East Timor has about 300 western-funded NGOs; as an employment sector, it's bigger than Sunrise field etc., could ever hope to be. The NGO sector in East Timor is about the closest parallel to a colonial administration that we can see in the post-colonial world - and much more insidiously effective thanks to its veneer of volunteerism, and its divisive, single-issue preoccupations that prevent any grass-roots solidarity in East Timor's national interest.

Probably much better understood than the NGO cargo cult is the unsavory fact that the west backed (some claim convincingly even initiated the whole concept for) the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. Western support for that action included loud and lavish sponsorship from debt-farming extortionists like the World Bank, and associated war criminals like Kissinger. Both such entities compelled Jakarta's enforcement of birth control in East Timor, including the use of Depo Provera, abortion, sterilization, and IUDs rejected as unsafe in North America, for example.

Now, if we just call for some notional "justice" by attributing all, or even the main, culpability to Indonesia, then we let the deep western involvement go unmentioned, unchallenged, and off the hook, scot free.

That would be worse than appeasement; it would smack of servile, colonial dependency, by those who would pimp their country and their countrymen to overseas imperial interests.

Oh, this guy's been on the World Bank gravy train. Perhaps he identifies himself as "Portuguese"?

Merdeka!

Pss'st have you any spare mascheti's or maybe an AK47 I'd love to get involved !